The Farkel Family - Cast

Cast

Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne, Henry Gibson, Larry Hovis, Arte Johnson and Jo Anne Worley were originally in the pilot special from 1967. Gary Owens (announcer), Eileen Brennan, Roddy Maude-Roxby, and Goldie Hawn came on in the show. Most of the cast members were not in all 14 episodes from the season. Only the two hosts, announcer, and Judy, Henry, and Arte were in all 14 episodes. Eileen only appears in half of the episodes. She, Larry, and Roddy left after the first season.

The second season saw a handful of new people, including Alan Sues, Dave Madden, and Chelsea Brown. All of the new cast members from the second season left at the end of that season, except Alan Sues who stayed on until 1972.

At the end of the 1968–1969 season, Judy Carne chose not to renew her contract, though she did make appearances during 1969–1970; producer George Schlatter blamed her for breaking up the "family." The show also survived the departures of Goldie Hawn and Jo Anne Worley to remain a top-20 show in 1970–1971. Schlatter tried to replace Hawn with other wide-eyed starlets acting dumb: first Pamela Rodgers, then Sarah Kennedy, and finally Donna Jean Young, but Hawn's ditzy characterization proved inimitable.

The third season saw several new people who only stayed on for that season, Teresa Graves, Jeremy Lloyd, Pamela Rodgers, and Stu Gilliam. Lily Tomlin joined in the middle of the season. Jo Anne Worley, Goldie Hawn, and Judy Carne left after the season.

New faces in the 1970–1971 season included tall, sad-eyed Dennis Allen, who alternately played quietly zany characters and straight man for anybody's jokes; comic actress Ann Elder, who also contributed to scripts, tap dancer Barbara Sharma, who would later appear on Rhoda, and beefy Johnny Brown, who played the superintendent Nathan "Buffalo Butt" Bookman on Good Times.

Arte Johnson, who created many characters, insisted on star billing, apart from the rest of the cast. The producer mollified him, but had announcer Gary Owens read Johnson's credit as a separate sentence: "Starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin! And Arte Johnson! With Ruth Buzzi ..." This maneuver gave Johnson star billing, but made it sound like he was still part of the ensemble cast. Johnson left the show after the 1970–1971 season. NBC aired the pilot for his situation comedy Call Holme, but it never became a series.

Henry Gibson also departed after the 1970–1971 season. He and Johnson were replaced by Richard Dawson and Larry Hovis, both of whom had appeared occasionally in the first season. Both of them were on Hogan's Heroes. However, the loss of Johnson's many characters caused ratings to drop farther. The show celebrated its 100th episode during the 1971–1972 season, with Carne, Worley, Johnson, Gibson, Graves, and Tiny Tim all returning for the festivities. John Wayne was also on hand for his first cameo appearance since 1968.

For the show's final season (1972–1973), Rowan and Martin assumed the executive producer roles from George Schlatter (known on-air as "CFG", which stood for "Crazy Fucking George") and Ed Friendly. Except for holdovers Dawson, Owens, Buzzi, and only occasional appearances from Tomlin, a new cast was brought in. This final season featured future Match Game panelist Patti Deutsch, folksy singer-comedian Jud Strunk, and ventriloquist act Willie Tyler and Lester. Deutsch, Strunk, and Tyler caught on to the spirit of the show and made valuable contributions (Deutsch did celebrity impressions — in the presence of the celebrity — and took over Worley's role in "The Farkel Family"). The shows were still amusing, but without the usual gang, viewers didn't respond as they once had.

These last shows never aired in the edited half-hour rerun syndicated (through Lorimar Productions) to local stations in 1983 and later aired on Nick at Nite. The cable network Trio started airing the show in its original one-hour form in the early 2000s, but only the pilot and the first 69 episodes (extending to the fourth episode of the 1970–1971 season) were included in Trio's package. Two "Best-of" DVD packages are also available; they only contain six episodes each.

Of over three dozen entertainers to grace the cast, only Rowan, Martin, Owens and Buzzi were there from beginning to end. However, Owens was not in the 1967 pilot and Buzzi missed two first-season episodes.

Lily Tomlin and Goldie Hawn later became noted film stars (Hawn won an Academy Award while still a member of the cast; Tomlin was later nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1975 for Nashville). Henry Gibson later co-starred in the Robert Altman film Nashville and was nominated for a Golden Globe. Ruth Buzzi became a regular on the Sesame Street children's television series. Dave Madden, whose trademark was to throw confetti (representing an unspoken impure thought) while keeping a dour expression at the punchline of a joke, played Reuben Kincaid on the television sitcom The Partridge Family. Richard Dawson, who previously had a regular supporting role on the sitcom Hogan's Heroes, went on to success on the game shows Match Game and Family Feud. Larry Hovis, also a regular on Hogan's Heroes, appeared on Laugh-In during the first and the fifth seasons. Teresa Graves parlayed her season on the show into the title role of the police drama Get Christie Love! Flip Wilson took Geraldine and his other characters to his own variety show from 1970 through 1974.